Browsing by Author "Kosonen, Taija"

Nature provides children an intriguing environment for learning and playing and it can also help improve motor skill development and concentration (Fjørtoft, 2001; Wells, 2000). Childhood nature experiences have also been associates with the formation of a positive relationship with nature (Wells & Lekies, 2006). The aim of environmental education is to increase understanding of and appreciation for the environment. Evironmental education should follow the Head, Heart and Hands model which takes into accordance the holistic develompent of the child physically, emotionally and cognitively. The aim of the study is to find out how environmental education is described in the early education plans of daycare centres and how the location of the daycare center influences the environmental education given. The subject of the research was the description of environmental education as stated in the daycare centres’ early education plans. The research material consisted of the early education plans of 20 daycare centres in Helsinki. Half of the daycare centres were located in urban settings and the other half in close proximity to natural environment such as a forest. The study was qualitative and the material was analyzed by a deductive approach. The Head, Heart and Hands model worked as the theoretical framework for the analysis. All early education plans included mentions that could be placed in the Head and Hands categories. The Heart category came to hold fewer mentions, in some early education plans there were none. This might suggest that the faculty of the daycare centres find it difficult to place objectives that have to do with emotional development in environmental education or that they don’t find it significant. The environmental education parts of the early education plans of daycare centres located near nature were on average longer than those of the urban daycare centres. The so called forest daycare centres visited the forest more often than the urban daycare centres. In turn, the urban day care centres went on field trips to built environment and near bodies of water and also familiarized with traffic behavior more often. From the equality perspective the forest daycare centres should make more use of the built enviroment and the urban daycare centres of forests. The location of the daycare centres did not have an effect on sustainable development mentioned in the early education plans.